If regular fantasy sports aren’t you thing, law clerk and self-described “Supreme Court nerd” Josh Blackman has set up a new sort of fantasy league for you: Fantasy SCOTUS. Tagline: “Play like the Tenth Justice.”
It works a little differently from a typical fantasy sports league, although if Ruth Bader Ginsberg pulls her Achilles, all bets are still off. From the rule description:
The Rules are simple. For each case the Supreme Court grants cert, predict:
-The Outcome of the Case (Affirm or Reverse the lower Court)
-The Split (9-0, 8-1, 7-2, 6-3, 5-4, 4-1-4, or fragmented)
– The Justices in the Majority, and the Justices in the Dissent
At the end of the Term, the Associate Justice who predicts the most cases correctly will be confirmed as the Chief Justice of the Fantasy Supreme Court League, and win a to-be-determined prize.
You get one point for correct outcome, three points for correct split, and one point each for which Justices will be in the majority versus the minority.
Yesterday, Blackman wrote a blog post decrying cheating which had surfaced on Fantasy SCOTUS, despite the fact that it’s a league with no cash prizes. In the hour-and-a-half lag between the Supreme Court’s delivery of a recent decision and Blackman’s locking down of the polls, he writes that “several members changed their votes to get more points.” Cue joke about lawyers being unethical.
Hopefully, this episode will be a mild speed bump in the life of the site: since its founding four months ago, it’s grown to nearly 4,000 members.
(h/t Metafilter)
